Gooseberries and Fury

Daily Prompt: Erasure

You have the choice to erase one incident from your past, as though it never happened. What would you erase and why?

I firmly believe that it is the sum of all our past actions and history that brings us to the point that we have reached. If we are happy in the place that we are, then nothing can or should be undone. I am happy. Better still, I am deeply content. I would not wish to change my path. Any bad things that happened along the way have added to the formation of my character and are what has made me, me.

I toyed with the notion of cancelling out the birth of my twin. I might have enjoyed growing up alone, with my own unshared identity. What might the unintended consequences be, though? Much as I relish the idea of being simply me as a teenager, rather than “the tug” who was forced to tag along because house rules dictated that we were were not allowed to go out alone but had to go everywhere together. It’s no fun being a twin when you are not the bonny one, and I might have enjoyed not having to go out with all those brothers, cousins and best friends of my sister’s boyfriends. There would have been no PB, who was four inches shorter than me and had me walk in the gutter to make him look taller. No G, who borrowed my umbrella in the rain but allowed me the use of his flat cap. No gooseberry jokes when I wore that green mohair cardigan…

Sigh

Nice idea, but I am sure there would have been worse consequences in being the only scapegoat in the house, instead of sharing the load from time to time.

May I choose to erase nothing? If not, I would select one of the many occasions when I have been unkind or unnecessarily wrathful. I have guilt. The guilt of a woman scorned and given to fury.

Just be aware of unintended consequences. The past is best left to lie, I think.

9 Comments

  1. March 14, 2013
    Reply

    Interesting take … and brave of you to be truthful about what you toyed with erasing … and yes, I am a couple days late on this prompt but wanted to see what other people wrote on the topic – love it if you had time to stop by my place 🙂

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